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Windows 7: Windows Update stuck at scanning for updates... forever

This is Windows 7 SP1 Ultimate (32bit). Windows Update is not working. It is set to install updates automatically, yet it never does, and if I initiate a manual scan, it doesn't work either. It gets stuck at the stage "scanning for new updates".

What I did so far:
- Cleaned all the temp directories
- Installed the latest windows update agent manually (using the standalone installer from Microsoft page - installed successfully)

24 hours? That sounds crazy Why is that?
Not this one I think. The package name is different. It is reading version 7.6 if I remember well. The one you linked seems to be even newer, judging by the release date (1 of december 2015, thats very new).
I will install this. Thanks

We can only guess why the search time for new installs jumped so drastically. Lots of bloggers have made lots of speculations. I've seen no concrete documentation as to what changed. My guess is: the WU servers have changed the way that they talk to the WU Client. You need the latest WU Client to efficiently handle the changes. And/Or: users might be connecting to a WU server that is a bit busy. W7 updates might be a low priority for that server. W10 users might get top priority.

I have a W7 virtual machine that only has SP1 installed. When I end that VM, it reverts back to its fresh install state (with no updates). I watched Wireshark for hours data during the WU search in that "fresh install" VM. I dumped the changes and repeated the Wireshark captures for the WU search after installing the latest version of the Windows Update Client. The amount of traffic that flowed was about the same. The time that it took to complete the search was much faster with the latest WU Client. However, I repeated that test again this morning with the same VM (minus the Wireshark traffic captures). I used the old Windows Update Agent that MS installs on fresh installs. (See image below.) It only took a couple of hours to get a list of about 200 updates. I've probably done this "fresh install - WU search" about a dozen times (over the last 5 months) with this frozen VM. I've seen it take more than a day. I've tried the reboot\restart search. Sometimes that shortens things.

Thanks. Turns out I had an older version installed, so I installed the one you linked.

Update: Actually, you're right
It required up to SEVEN hours of waiting.I was like, ok I can't help it, so I didn't do aynthing at all.

It got solved by just waiting. That's very funny in IT world

The next day, after finishing work, I was about to turn off my notebook when the orange update-badge appeared on my shutdown button in the start menu. I clicked it and it began installing 76 updates. (Never mind it was scheduled for Friday, I'm happy it installed it at all )

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